It's quite remarkable that gaming's most famous icon and one of the most recognizable mascots in the world is a chubby Italian plumber named Mario. If you look at his live-action counterpart as played by Captain Lou Albino on the short-lived Super Mario Bros. Super Show, you wouldn't think that he could save any kingdom:
And yet, he has endured as Nintendo's flagship mascot, thwarting Bowser's every scheme and getting in a good game of tennis or soccer here and there. And if you think about it, Mario's unassuming image does give him kind of an everyman type of quality that people can relate to. Interestingly enough, Shigeru Miyamoto's design for Mario came not as a desire to portray a blue-collar hero, but out of technological necessity. This is from Mario's Wikipedia article:
The design was strongly affected by the technical limitations of the hardware, which permitted only 16x16 pixels for the main character. The mustache was easier to represent than a mouth, and formed the image of a large nose. The multicolored clothes provided contrast with the black background, and the overalls served as a distinction between the body and the arms, so that one recognized their movement. Because of the cap, it was not necessary to represent the movement of Mario's hair if he jumped.
And thus Mario, or Jumpman as Shiggy first called him, was born. Today's video compiles pretty much every commercial featuring our favorite rotund plumber, even some from Japan (which includes a very creepy peeping-tom Mario).
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